Commentary, information, and intelligent discourse about the Irish economy

Climate bill (ctd)

The Climate Change Response Bill was debated in the Seanad yesterday. You can read the various interventions here.

Minister Cuffe is not very clear on the 2020 target, but seems to argue that the climate bill does not go beyond the current EU obligations. He offers two arguments. Second, Ireland will overcomply on its ETS obligations, and this will count towards Ireland’s non-ETS obligations. This is an accounting gimmick. Ireland would export its excess ETS permits to offset undercompliance elsewhere in Europe; emissions would not fall. Note that Ireland will just about meet its ETS targets according to the EER2010.

Third, Minister Cuffe seems to use the EU accounting method for land use emissions in 2020, and the UN accounting method for 2008. The increase in the carbon sink is much smaller than the Minister suggests if one uses the same method for both years.

Senator Glynn of Fianna Fail states that “[t]he Bill does not impose any legal obligations on Government to achieve the emissions targets set in the Bill and it allows for these targets to be changed.” That’s a remarkable position.

IBEC has published its analysis of the climate bill, including an estimate of the costs. That cost estimate is exceedingly optimistic for the following reasons:

IBEC assumes that emissions from land use are accounted for according to the yet-to-be-enacted EU rules.

IBEC takes the EPA’s with-additional-measures scenario as its starting point. That scenario is rich in wishful thinking, and IBEC does not count the costs of the “additional measures”.

IBEC’s numbers are based on an engineering model. Such models are notorious for underestimating the costs of emission reduction.

IBEC assumes that the marginal cost of -30% by 2030 is the same as the marginal cost of -30% by 2020. This would be true if the capital stock has an average life time of one year.

The cost estimate assumes that the emission reduction burden is shared optimally between ETS and non-ETS. As I’ve argued before, the extra burden would fall on the non-ETS.

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33 thoughts on “Climate bill (ctd)”

“Our temperate climate is seldom acknowledged as a national asset but the recent cold spell acted as a timely reminder of its importance to us as a society and an economy.” – Ciarán Cuffe (Green Party)

@pongo
I had missed that one. The recent cold spell is indeed weather rather than climate, and contrary to what some journalists would like us to believe, it is inconsistent with the expected climate change. The consensus forecast for this part of the world is that winters will warm faster than summers.

Yeh so much for those models, A good theory makes good predictions and can be verified via repeated experimentation.

Anyways moving on a little later on in debate:

“Some would argue that we should not be setting targets here that exceed our obligations, but this is being done in part in anticipation of the 30% EU target coming into effect in time.
…
The Confederation of British Industry chairman, Sir Richard Lambert, has stated that the CBI will not allow uncertainty of global targets to stop British industry from moving ahead. We cannot be left trailing behind Great Britain and Northern Ireland in our readiness for the low carbon future with which this Bill provides us.” – Mark Dearey (Green Party)

“They have nuclear energy.” – Paudie Coffey (Fine Gael)

It seems the Greens want to follow Britain in order not to be “outdone” and look bad at the Green get-togethers 😀
Except meeting carbon targets is easy when you have no issues with nuclear power, and UK are well on their way of meeting their targets in part thanks to nuclear.

We need a ‘climate bill’ like we need a hole in the head. Its complete ideological claptrap.

The two worst environmental polluters could not give a damn about the effects on their own citizens – so we here on the periphery are just disposable.

What we need to do is give Chindia the Agincourt Salute, and slap a massive tariff on all goods and sevices emanating from any source that will not implement basic environmental protections. This will get their attention – maybe.

Ireland is headed backwards (Regressing) economically. Having to bear utterly wasteful costs is just plain bonkers.

I don’t see it just as a ‘cost’, or purely outflow/negative. I agree some of the greens policy is economically suspect on a national/international level, (subsidising imports like electric cars etc. to use electricity made with, err, coal and peat) but legislating in a progressive way a rebalancing of our energy usage and subsidising internal generative capacity along with efficiency is beneficial on all levels, for the current national accounting bottom line and the real one, our grand kids. That’s what this is all about at the end of the day, legacy.

I wouldn’t worry about China, India, America and Europe are far and away the biggest polluters, as net users, of all the energy burned. Tariffs could help, especially if arranged via the WTO. No body can ‘get out of jail free’ on this one, not for long. It’s why accounting and oversight on carbon usage are such major (contentious) parts of the copenhagen, cancun etc. conferences. If we can count it fairly we can tax / tariff / subsidise and amortize it. all the manovering is for position in dominating the next 30 years. We’ve got (in Europe) most of the strongest technological and engineering cards, we need China to keep making stuff, just with something other than coal (70%).

“The recent cold spell is indeed weather rather than climate, and contrary to what some journalists would like us to believe, it is inconsistent with the expected climate change. ”

So Richard Tol believes that snow this year disproves AGW? That is the meaning of the word “inconsistent”. Does he even understand the difference between weather and climate, or does he just repeat popular memes from hot summers?

True, that article backs my view that its here in Ireland/Europe here and now we should be moving towards environmentally sound options. Using supranational institutions (WTO, UN) to put the footing of world trade and (lets face it) continued international harmony on a more equal / multilateral basis.

I’ve a problem with the way Chinese labour laws are configured.
I’ve no problem with China using european technology to make turbines to generate electricity.
I’ve a problem (as does our beloved 😉 with China artificially keeping its currency undervalued, in order to sell such cruelly made turbines to us.

There’s no question Krugman argues consistently for sustainable technology as a way of de-linking imbalances in trade and the injustices (war) it frequently brings.

@Edward
A cold winter does not prove or disprove anything. We can look forward to fewer such winters in the future.

There are, however, a couple of fools who believe that a few cold winters in a row are a sure sign of global warming. Minister Cuffe has made approving noises about this hypothesis, and he refers to it in his speech.

Hadn’t noticed I had views similar to Krugman. I have read his stuff – his books are OK, but the NYT op-ed stuff is somewhat parochial.

My principle gripe is that we – Advanced Economies, need to ‘bend-over’ with respect to environmental concerns. We should indeed try to lower our emissions, but transitioning to ‘alternate energy sources’ toward some sort of ‘sustainable growth’ (a completely misunderstood construct) is simply not a runner – it will be very costly (in energy unit cost) as we would have to pull forward a significant proportion of our future energy use to build-out the new infrastructure. Not a runner!

Anyways I agree with you, since this economy has been setback easily a decade (or more) we should be re-examining all these targets, which smell too much like the old soviet gosplans anyways. I don’t understand what’s the rush to push this thru without stopping to think about the consequences? If CO2 is really such a threat then we could get rid of most our emmissions with a nuke plant or two in a 10-15 years, problem solved.

fundamental transitory changes are hard, very hard, given all the path dependency issues with an oil/coal based society, but not impossible.

As I hope Munster can prove again on Sunday “to the brave and the faithful nothing is impossible” 😉

Personal view, we’re already in ‘wily coyote’ territory (pedalling legs, thin air, the cliff edge having passed). This is the “2C or 3C” ‘debate’. What happens in Ireland should concern us, we are a part of Europe, a clod in the sea perhaps, but there’s far more to gain via action than despair.

Everything we do to get onto a low / quasi-zero carbon trajectory is money well spent, energy well used, an investment, not a cost. Tangible, knowable returns in actually useful energy, not ponzi financed mortgages via CDS and leverage (my current industry).

My view is (with lefty flowers in my hair perhaps 😉 that if we can wage wars, as a society, we can wage one against oil/coal dependency. No one can suggest cold turkey, and no one can suggest instant revolutionary / off the wall ‘don’t drive your car or eat meat’ stuff but doing nothing is not a runner either. Strategic, scientific, intelligent steps towards meeting/beating/profiting from European and global targets is what we’ve got to do, what we must do.

The best argument in favour of low-carbon energy future is energy independence and consequent impact on balance of payments. The fact that AGW impact declines is a happy bonus. That said, there’s different ways to get to a low carbon future and it’s important that schemes be examined for vested interests (such as the SIMI).

Thanks for the comments lads. This issue of emissions reduction and its relationship to GW is a good political ploy – but its just plain daft when you seriously consider the energy cost of any alternatives to our almost complete dependence on fossil fuesl (oil, gas and coal).

I again stress the energy unit cost of alternatives. This will dictate what is feasible and what is not. The monetary cost is an accounting distraction and should be ignored. Unless you have actual access to the energy sources essential to build-out, maintain and replace your alternativs, your a dead duck! That is, the energy sources are yours, not a neighbours!

Consider our current crop of politicians, legislators and bureacrats as being clueless about re-usable energy resource prevision and act accordingly. If I’m wrong about this, teriffic. If I’m not – I recommend you migrate to lat 35 N or thereabouts! Preferably close to water. Alternatively if you wish to remain here: get a farm!

Extracting net energy, from low energy density natural energy flows, such as wind, moving water and sun, will very probably not give us even a small fraction of the energy that we now base our lives on, let alone have enough extra energy needed to build and maintain, the huge infrastructure required for even a modest “alternative” energy regime.

Anyone wanting to understand, the energy problems that we are going to start to face probably very shortly, would be well advised to aquaint themselves with the concept of EROEI—energy return on energy invested.

This concept, is going to rule the viability of all energy production systems from now on, and should be taught in our schools.

From the energy policies that our Governments are promoting, it is quite obvious that they have never heard of EROEI, or if they have they just don`t understand it.

I think it was Tol who mentioned Denmark having to rely on neighbours, export for free at times and still has one the highest electricity cost in Europe despite a multi-decade headstart.

It is regrettable that Tol has seemingly never met a denialist meme that he hasn’t faithfully reported here, yet somehow never has the time for retractions or corrections:

“A controversial report critical of the wind energy industry from conservative think tank CEPOS was commissioned and paid for by an American think tank with close ties to the coal and oil industries, according to trade journal Ingeniøren.

The report, which was published last September and concluded that Danish wind energy figures were misleading, was taken by CEPOS members to the US media in the months leading up to the COP15 climate summit in Copenhagen. The message behind the report indicated that the Danish wind turbine industry model was not effective.

Numerous experts have since strongly criticised the report’s conclusions, challenging many of the figures and the means in which those figures were obtained.

But now it appears that the report was indirectly commissioned and paid for by the American coal and oil lobby.”

If the American coal and oil lobby knew about EROEI, they would be delighted to see more wind turbines being deployed, for these monstrous machines are nothing more or less than huge energy sinks, and even if they were`nt, their relative puny output, could never mount any threat to our assured continued use of fossil fuels.

Pongo’s first comment doesn’t work. Cuffe said that the recent cold spell was a reminder of the importance of having a temperate climate. He didn’t point to it as evidence of climate change. He didn’t even imply it.

In other news, we learn that the Department of Community, Equality and Gaeltacht Affairs, known to its fans as Craggy Island, is helping to subsidise electric cars for the inhabitants of, er, Craggy Island.

The feed-in tariff is paid by the Danish TSO and passed on to consumers in the pre-tax price which is in the Eurostat ten00115 report. The Danish government then chooses to add huge taxes on electricity which are paid to the Danish Exchequer. This is a policy decision which is unrelated to wind generation.

Denmark is a high tax country with tax revenue equivalent to nearly 50% of GDP. A VW Golf is twice the price in Denmark as in Ireland but this is not due to subsidies to car manufacturers.